Taking a Spin: How the Republicans Could Win Big

By NATE COHN

July 11, 2014

Spinning the wheels of The Upshot’s Senate forecaster is one of our favorite tools for understanding the uncertainty around this November’s election. In today’s spin, the Republicans ride a “wave” to a decisive, nine-seat gain in the Senate.

This outcome assumes a broad national shift toward the Republicans. Jeanne Shaheen, the Democratic incumbent in New Hampshire, maintains a comfortable lead in the polls, but here she loses. So does Gary Peters in Michigan, who also has a modest lead.

There still could be a big national shift toward the Republicans over the final four months of the race. There’s certainly precedent. In 2010, the Republicans only now started to open up their advantage in the generic congressional ballot; in 2006, the full Democratic advantage didn’t become apparent until October, after the Mark Foley scandal broke; in 2012, the Democrats didn’t clearly hold the advantage in the Senate until after the Democratic convention. It is also possible that today’s polls of registered voters, or Leo’s likely voter adjustment, do not fully reflect the scale of the G.O.P. turnout advantage this fall, which could easily be larger than usual.

But now that we’re in mid-July, it’s time to start wondering whether the long-promised Republican wave will actually materialize. At the moment, Democrats hold an edge of a couple of points in the generic congressional ballot — about the same as this time in 2012, or perhaps even a little more. The hopes of vulnerable red-state Democratic incumbents like Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu are still very much alive — which is not something we could have said about Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania in 2006 or Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas in 2010. The open seats in purple states, like Michigan and Iowa, haven’t broken against Democrats, either. The president’s approval ratings haven’t taken a dive into the 30s, and he still maintains fairly healthy levels of support among Democratic leaners. It is hard to detect any secular trend toward the Republicans in the state or national polls.

Again, all of this might change over the coming months. But so far, the Republican wave hasn’t hit, and the warning signs aren’t as strong as they were in 2006 or 2010. Every day without hints of such a trend increases the odds that there won’t be a Republican wave, and that the fight for control of the Senate will simply come down to whether Southern white voters can stomach re-electing a Democratic senator while Barack Obama holds the presidency. In short, this week’s spin is becoming less likely with every week.